Saturday, March 1, 2014

Liberty, Equality, Geography: An Interview with John P. Clark on the Revolutionary Eco-Anarchism of Elisée Reclus

Social geography is the study of how landscape, climate, and other
features of a place shape the livelihoods, values, and cultural traditions of
its inhabitants (and vice versa). Frenchman Elisée Reclus (1830 – 1905), a
progenitor of the discipline, believed strongly in the rights and abilities of
people to manage themselves in relation to their local bioregion, free from
rule by a remote, centralized government. His approach to anarchy was unique in
its emphasis on the environment – Reclus understood that a mindset that
encourages one person or people’s domination over another must, in the race to
profit from natural “resources”, also foster domination over nature. Like the
social ecologists who have succeeded him, Reclus believed that solutions to
ecological crises must involve restoring balance, equality, and a sense of
interrelationship between humans and other humans, and between humans and the
biosphere.

The first half of the
recently-published Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected
Writings of Elisée Reclus, edited and translated by John Clark
and Camille Martin, forms a comprehensive critical survey of Reclus’ philosophy
and political theory,including biographical
information and historical context. The “modern”
manifestations of oppression (including the concentration of wealth and power,
surveillance, racism, sexism, and ecological degradation) that concerned Reclus
in late-1800s Europe, the United States, and Central and South America are
indeed still strikingly – infuriatingly – present. The second half of the book
consists of translations of several pieces from Reclus’ extensive oeuvre, some
of which have never before appeared in English translation.

AS: Can you describe how anarchy – specifically the kind based in
mutual aid and environmental responsibility in service to a greater good
illuminated here by Reclus, and by you in your book The Impossible Community, differs
from other conceptions (or misconceptions) of anarchy, and how it might (as
contrasted with other ideologies) be useful to us now?

John P. Clark: The world is rife with misconceptions about
anarchism.

The most historically and
theoretically grounded definition – the one that goes back to classical figures
like Elisée Reclus – is quite simple: anarchy consists of the critique of all
systems of domination and the struggle to abolish those systems, in concert
with the practice of free, non-dominating community, which is the real
alternative to these systems. Anarchy
is the entire sphere of human life that takes place outside the boundaries of arche,
or domination, in all its forms – statism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy,
racial oppression, heterosexism, technological domination, the domination of
nature, etc. It rejects the hegemony of the centralized state, the
capitalist market, and any hybrid of the two, and seeks to create a society
free of all systematic forms of domination of humanity and nature. It envisions
a society in which power remains decentralized at the base, decision-making is
carried out through voluntary association and participatory democracy, and
larger social purposes are pursued through the free federation of communities,
affinity groups, and associations.

Anarchism is not merely about
a transformation of social institutional structures, however. As further discussed
in my book The
Impossible Community, it also encompasses a fundamental transformation of the
social imaginary, the social ideology, and the social ethos. Communitarian
anarchism assumes that social transformation, to be successful, must encompass
all major spheres of social determination. It recognizes that there are
ontological, ethical, aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of
anarchy or non-domination. According to Reclus and other communitarian
anarchists, these are not just
vague ideals to be achieved in some future utopia; rather, such a
transformation is immediately
realized here and nowwherever love and solidarity are embodied in
existing human relationships and social practice. Anarchism is strongly
committed to “prefigurative” forms of association, and to the idea of “creating
the new society within the shell of the old.” In fact, the communities of
liberation that we create here and now do more than “prefigure” the ultimate
goal; they are actual “figurations” of our ideals, actually giving a form, or a
face, to them in the present.

By demonstrating that the most
deeply rooted social order arises not out of coercion, oppression, and
domination, but out of mutual aid and cooperation, communitarian anarchism is a
truly revolutionary project. In working to regenerate community at the most fundamental
level, it seeks to reverse the course of thousands of years of history in which
relations of solidarity have been progressively replaced by market relations,
commodity relations, bureaucratic relations, technical relations, instrumental
relations, and relations of coercion and domination. The ecocidal and genocidal
effects of such relations compel us to consider whether we will remain
on history’s present catastrophic course, or seize the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the flourishing of both humanity and the whole of life
in the biospheric community. In the work of Reclus we find universally
accessible, immediately implementable alternatives.

Reclus cites some of the anarchic forms of human community that
have made up much of world history, and remarks that “the names of the Spanish
comuñeros, of the French communes, of the English yeomen, of the free cities in
Germany, of the Republic of Novgorod and of the marvelous communities of Italy
must be, with us Anarchists, household words: never was civilized humanity
nearer to real Anarchy than it was in certain phases of the communal history of
Florence and Nürnberg.” Today we can add the names of many movements that span
the century since Reclus: the collectives in the Spanish Revolution; the
Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement; the global cooperative movement; the rich history
of libertarian intentional communities; the Zapatista Movement; radical
indigenous movements throughout the world; the global justice movement; and recently,
the “horizontalist” practice of the Occupy Movement.

AS: In his 1898 essay “Evolution, Revolution, and the Anarchist Ideal”
Reclus reflects on “the spirit of the
strike” and various kinds of cooperative associations (such as bartering of
goods and services, collaborative communities, and consumers’ associations) as
effective ways to build solidarity. He claims that it is “in struggling for a common cause” together that we form the bonds
necessary for the ongoing project of social revolution. In an 1895 letter to
Clara Koettlitz he advises the aspiring anarchist to “work to free himself personally from all preconceived or imposed
ideas, and gradually gather around himself friends who live and act in the same
way. It is step by step, through small, loving, and intelligent associations
that the great fraternal society will be formed.” Can you speak on the transformative
power of the process itself? Can you recommend some constructive immediate
steps for today’s revolutionaries?

JPC: The spirit of the strike, which means essentially the spirit
of active and creative resistance, has enormous significance in the everyday
life of any person who is committed to liberatory social transformation. In our present epoch of looming ecocidal and genocidal catastrophe, each
person must make a basic decision. It is a “living, forced, momentous option,”
to use William James's famous terms. Each must answer the question, “Am I a
resister or am I collaborator?” This is as true for us today as it was for
anyone living in Vichy France in the early 40s. We must decide either for
solidarity with humanity and nature or for betrayal of both in the struggle
against domination. For this reason we might say that authentic anarchists are
not merely an-archists but anti-archists. To be an “an-archist,” one who is
“not an archist,” might imply something like “domination just isn’t my thing,”
or “I’m not comfortable with domination.”But the true spirit of anarchism, that is, anti-archism, implies that
“domination is an intolerable thing,” that “when I see domination in any form I
become indignant.”

I agree with Reclus’ contention that “small, loving and
intelligent associations” are thekey to
breaking out of the cycle of social determination and regenerating free
community on the larger social level. Such micro-communities are “small” in the
sense that they are the locus of primary, intimate, face-to-face relationships,
they are “loving” in that they are founded on the practice of solidarity,
mutual aid, compassion, and cooperation, and they are “intelligent” in that they
are self-consciously transformative, awakened to their own meaning and
purpose, the primary social space in which theory and practice converge. As
primary communities of solidarity they are the only basis on which a solidarity economy
and a larger solidarity society can be created. Reclus believed that
these “small, loving and
intelligent associations” should not isolate themselves, but on the
contrary should develop their lives together in close relationship to their
larger communities, always considering their role in the evolution of the whole
society toward “the great
fraternal society” of the future.

While ambivalent
towards, and even skeptical of, the role of small cooperatives and intentional "communes" or "colonies" separate from the local community, Reclus believed that an indispensable part of
the process of social transformation is the creation of institutions that
embody a growing spirit and practice of solidarity at the most basic levels of
society.He stressed the importance of the
development of a “spirit of full association” in which local communities
collectively take on many cooperative projects. He looked to already-existing
practices of mutual aid and cooperation as a kind of material basis on which
further developments could be grounded. The
Reclus family’s life, which was pervaded by love and cooperation, was described
by Elisée’s nephew and biographer Paul Reclus as “putting communism into
practice.” Thus, Reclus’ own family was in effect a libertarian communist or
communitarian anarchist affinity group, his most immediate evidence of what is
possible in a future society.

In The Impossible Community,
I refer to “communities of liberation and solidarity,” but these have gone
under many names, notably, the “affinity group” in the anarchist movement, the “base
community” in Latin American social justice movements, and the “ashram” in the
Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement. In all of these cases, the fact that they have been
integral parts of transformative social movements has helped protect them from
the pitfalls of self-obsession and self-marginalization that Reclus saw in some intentional communities. Rather than
one-sidedly turning inward, they turn both inward and outward simultaneously,
and act as the foundation for larger federative activity. We might call them the
material and spiritual base for social evolution and social revolution.

Reclus’ insights into the
“spirit of full association” are desperately needed by today’s anarchists,
anti-authoritarians, and all those who are concerned with liberatory social
transformation.On the one hand, many
of those who have the most far-reaching visions of social change remain trapped
in marginal projects and relatively isolated subcultures. On the other hand, almost
all those who are most actively engaged with local communities are in the end
co-opted into single-issue politics and innocuous reformism. Reclus urges
activists, (who must be, he says, at once “evolutionists” and “revolutionists”)
to become deeply engaged in the struggles of actually-existing communities, focusing
on the needs and aspirations of ordinary people, while at the same time helping
to create new expressions of communal solidarity that are a revolutionary
challenge to the existing system of domination.

AS: The caption to an illustration of the globe being held up by two
hands that appears in the preface to Reclus’ 3,500-page masterwork L’Homme
et la Terre (reproduced in this edition of Anarchy,
Geography, Modernity) contains one of his best-known maxims: “L’homme est la nature prenant conscience
d’elle-même” – translated here as “humanity is nature becoming
self-conscious.” Do you think (or might Reclus have
thought) that humans are the only biological creature that is an
artifact of nature becoming conscious of itself?

JPC: Human beings are certainly not the only form of nature’s
consciousness. Of course, all consciousness is nature’s consciousness, and
since the objects of this consciousness are also nature, there is a sense in
which all consciousness is nature’s self-consciousness, as I’m sure Reclus
would agree. But the idea that humans are self-conscious nature in a strong
sense means that not only do we possess consciousness,we
are capable of knowing that we have this quality and guiding our actions
accordingly. There is a degree of self-consciousness that makes possible a
sense of wonder at the natural world and a sense of responsibility concerning
it. It is this self-consciousness that makes possible a
narrative understanding of our place in the natural world.

We are only now beginning to
see the way in which Reclus’ thought made a major contribution to the dawning
awareness of humanity’s place within a larger story of the earth. His conviction
that “humanity is nature becoming self-conscious” belongs to certain
wide-ranging tendencies in Nineteenth Century thought. On the one hand, German
idealist philosophy (Hegel, Schelling) and Romantic literature (Wordsworth, the
transcendentalists) reinterpreted all of reality as aspects of a Universal
Spirit that encompasses humanity and nature, and was becoming conscious of
itself in history. But these insights stayed largely on an idealist and
aesthetic level, and Spirit remained largely divorced from scientific and
material realities. Marx’s historical materialism contributed much of what was
lacking in such idealist accounts, in that it interpreted history as the story
of the alienation of humanity from its own life activity and productive
processes, and of the overcoming of this split and the ideologies that mystify
it. This account was in many ways a great advance, in that it was grounded in
material reality and took seriously the insights of modern science. Yet it
tended toward a reductionism that ignored many of the dimensions of nature and
spirit that idealism and Romanticism uncovered. Reclus’ thought was the first
attempt at a real synthesis and transcendence of these two perspectives. In his
work, Hegel’s story of “Spirit” and Marx’s story of “Man” are raised up (aufgehoben) to the level of the “Earth Story”,
a narrative in which humanity is seen as developing in dialectical relation to
nature, and in which the opposition between spirit and matter is overcome...or, minimally, that the project of overcoming it is posed seriously.

Prior to the late twentieth century,broad, encompassing, synthesizing conceptions of the
global and of “globalization” had not pervaded the general consciousness. Yet, well
before the end of the Nineteenth Century, Reclus had already begun developing a
theoretically sophisticated historical and geographical conception of
globalization, one that encompasses the geological, geographical, ecological,
political, economic, and cultural spheres. Reclus is thus a crucial figure in
the emergence of a conception of globalization that remains more advanced than
the ones that predominate even today. He urged us, long before this language
even existed, to overcome the “centrisms” that have doomed us. He attacked the
egocentrism that raises one individual above others and the anthropocentrism
that subordinates the natural world to humanity. But not least of all he
challenged his age to overcome Eurocentrism and adopt a truly global
perspective. He asks, “Hasn’t it become obvious to members of the great human
family that the center of civilization is already everywhere?” [AGM, p.222]. In the end, Reclus is a visionary
and prophet of earth-consciousness and world-consciousness in their deepest
senses, senses that are still only beginning to dawn on humanity.

Reclus summarizes his project
in his two great works, The New Universal
Geography and Humanity and the Earth
(which together run to nearly 20,000 pages) as “the attempt to follow
the evolution of humanity in relation to forms of life on earth, and the evolution
of forms of life on earth in relation to humanity.” [Élisée Reclus, Leçon d’ouverture du cours de Géographie comparée dans l’espace et dans
le temps. Extrait de la REVUE UNIVERSITAIRE, Bruxelles, 1894, p. 5,
my translation]. It is for this reason that he deserves recognition as a
founder not only of social geography but also of social ecology. In fact, his
rich, detailed development of social ecological analysis makes most of what
has gone under that rubric since his time seem amateurish in comparison. We
need to reinvigorate social ecology today with the kind of scientific and
historical grounding found in Reclus but with a theoretical rigor that goes far
beyond his efforts.

Reclus’ announcement that
“humanity is nature becoming self-conscious” is a quite momentous one, and is
certain to become even more fateful as global climate catastrophe accelerates
and as we move more deeply into the Sixth Mass Extinction of life on Earth.We need to ponder what is at stake today in the
question of whether humanity can actively assume its role as self-conscious
nature. Reclus was confident that it would succeed in doing so, and in the
process demonstrate that another world is possible beyond the limits of
domination. Today, in our much less optimistic age, it is much more difficult
for many to believe that such an “other world” is at all possible, despite the
fact there are ever stronger indications that the present one is becoming less
possible day by day. This world’s ultimate impossibility, even if it is inevitable,
remains implausible. For its productive powers, imaginary powers and
ideological powers are all seeming testimony to its insuperable reality, and
these powerscontinue to expand.In reality, we have good reason to ask
whether, if another world does not rapidly become possible, any world at all
will remain actual. The impossible community, the Reclusian community of love and solidarity, is a practical and dialectical answer to this more than theoretical, more than rhetorical question. In the midst of a world-destroying epoch, the impossible community presents itself as a world-making and world-preserving community. In the midst of egocentric cynicism and moral paralysis, it is a charismatic community of gifts and of the gift. It is an ethos that inspires and reawakens the person, sweeping him or her into a new realm of deeper reality and more compelling truth. It is our ultimate hope for the world.